IMHO prohibition sentiment requires inherent addiction to status quo, an incapacity to visualise beyond the here and now and a desperate desire to know others might feel the same...
Reform is not revolutionary, rather it is evolutionary. Having survived banging your head against a brick wall the evolutionist relishes having stopped. / Blair

Monday, December 09, 2013

DeCriminalising Maori With/Without Cannabis Courts

http://revtalk.co.nz/2013/12/cannabis-decriminalising-maori/

Please look up "deviency amplification" and tell me how Maori are somehow insulated from its effects, somehow different, somehow unencumbered by everything that is wrong with the blanket prohibitionist paradigm. No one is suggesting reform is perfect... it is harm minimising. And it speaks volumes for self will, self determination and self empowerment.

Legal regulation in the USA (and in other jurisdictions, even if defacto) has resulted in LESS youth access, less CRIMINALnetworks and improved relationships in the youth/police nexus. Any system that sees Wellington kids diverted and Porirua kids convicted and homoginises the results so they make the Police look good is not to be trusted. Even to the point that ethnic targeting (and research that validates it) of a policy post conviction/diversion via drug courts is inherently flawed. Best described as a gentler kinder prohibition with other coercive care downsides the system is reluctant to look at for fear of the failures it may highlight.

Whatever solution is the right solution it will not be found in special rules for one lot and other rules for the rest.

If we were honest with our whanau it might start by understanding this basic truth.

They use cannabis because they enjoy it!

It is the misuse that is problematic. Urine testing may satisfy one standard of evidence, but it still masks the lie. There lies the crime. Drug courts are no place to practice double standards. It has its own moral jeopardy. Lets not institutionalise that as well. It maybe harder to eliminate than cannabis metabolites, its effects may last longer than a few court sessions.

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